Screenshot from the trailer for the 1931 film Dracula featuring Bela Lugosi as the title character
28 October 2020
The ultimate origin of the name of this blood-sucking fiend is somewhat in dispute, but vampire’s history in the English language is fairly well established. It’s first known appearance in English is in 1731/32. (The difference in years is because England and Wales adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1751, and New Year’s Day shifted from 25 March to 1 January. It was 1731 by the contemporary reckoning and 1732 by present-day reckoning.)
The major dictionaries are all in agreement that English borrowed vampire from the French vampyre, which borrowed it from the German vampir, which borrowed it from the Serbian vampir. Beyond that, the trail gets muddy, but the word is ultimately either of Slavic or Turkic origin.
The English word first appears in a news item published in the Grub-Street Journal of 16 March 1731/32. The story relates the tale of Arnold Paul, an alleged vampire. The story is well known in vampire lore and contains many of the tropes we currently associate with the myth, and it is one the first vampire stories to be widely disseminated in western Europe. The tale, as printed in the Grub-Street Journal bears a dateline of 10 March 1731/32 and reads as follows:
Medreyga in Hungary, Jan. 7, 1732. Upon a current Report, that in the Village of Medreyga certain dead Bodies (called here Vampyres) had killed several Persons, by sucking out all their blood, the present Enquiry was made by the Honourable Commander in Chief; and Capt. Gorschutz of the Company of Stallater, the Hadnagi Bariacrar, and the Senior Heyduke of the village were severally examined: who unanimously declared that about 5 Years ago a certain Heyduke, named Arnold Paul, was killed by the overturning of a cart load of hay, who in this life-time was often heard to say, he had been tormented near Caschaw, and upon the Borders of Turkish Servia, by a Vampyre; and that to extricate himself, he had eaten some of the Earth of the Vampyres graves, and rubb’d himself with their Blood.——That 20 or 30 Days after the decease of the said Arnold Paul, several persons complained that they were tormented, and that, in short, he had taken away the lives of four persons. In order, therefore, to put a stop to such a calamity, the inhabitants of the place, after having consulted their Hadnagi, caused the Body of the said Arnold Paul to be taken up, 40 Days after he had been dead, and found the same to be fresh and free from all manner of corruption; that he bled at the nose, mouth and ears, as pure and florid blood as ever was seen; and that his shroud and winding sheet were all over bloody; and lasty his finger and toe nails were fallen off, and new ones grown in their room.——As they observed from all these circumstances, that he was a Vampyre, they, according to custom, drove a stake through his heart; at which he gave a horrid groan, and lost a great deal of blood. Afterwards they burnt his body to ashes the same day, and threw them into his grave.——These good men say farther, that all such as have been tormented, or killed by Vampyres, become Vampyres when they are dead; and therefore they served several other dead bodies as they had done Arnold Paul’s, for tormenting the living.—Signed, Batuer, first Lieutenant of the Regiment of Alexander. Flikbenger, Surgeon Major to the Regiment of Furstemburch.—Three other Surgeons. Gurschitz, Captain a Stallath.
The story was retold and reprinted several times, becoming quite famous in England. Several weeks after the initial printing, it was reprinted in the Craftsman of 20 May 1732, which in addition to the retelling the Paul story also used vampire in a figurative sense, that of someone who uses a position of trust to embezzle money:
Give me Leave to observe, in this Place, that Private Persons may be Vampyres, in some Degree, as well as Those in publick Employments. I look upon all Sharpers, Usurers and Stockjobbers in this Light, as well as fraudulent Guardians, unjust Stewards, and the dry Nurses of great Estates. I make no Doubt that a noble Colonel, lately deceased, hath already convinced several Families that He is a Vampyre; and I could mention several other Gentlemen, in great Favour at present, who have intitled Themselves to same Denomination.
It will not, I suppose, be deny’d that many of the late South-Sea Directors were Tormenters of this Sort; and I heartily with that the present Managers of that Company may not furnish us with some Instances of the same Nature.
The Charitable Corporation hath produced a plentiful Crop of these Blood-suckers, whose Depredations have already ruin’d a Multitude of People, and I am afraid will torment others, even yet unborn.
Within a year this figurative use of vampire was being used without any reference to “real” vampires, indicating that the myth had become fully established in the English psyche. From an open letter to Robert Walpole of 28 February 1733/34:
When a Dutchman is paying his Taxes, which he does with every Bit he puts in his Mouth, it is some Satisfaction to him to know that he is not giving from his Family what he has earned with the sweat of his Brows, to build Palaces, and make magnificent Gardens; to buy glaring Equipages, sumptuous Furniture, Jewels, Plate, and costly Pictures, &c. to indulge the Luxury, and gratify the Rapine of a fat-gutted Vampire.
A similar use is by Charles Hornby in a review of a book about British peerages, where he uses vampire in a discussion of an error in the book. Evidently, the author of the book confused Robert de Brus, a.k.a. Bruce the Competitor, fifth lord of Annandale, who died in 1295, with more famous his grandson, Robert the Bruce, soon-to-be king of Scotland, who killed John Comyn in 1306:
Is there one who looks into the History of those Times, but knows, that John Comyn of Badenach was killed at Dumfries in the Beginning of the year 1306; and our Author has told us, (and very truly as it happens) that this Competitor died in the Year 1295. Now, dear Sir, is it not very miraculous, that his Disappointment should make as blood-thirsty as a Vampire, and that after about ten Years he should steal out of his Grave, with a malicious Design to commit Murder?
Our present-day conception of a suave, aristocratic vampire was invented by John William Polidori in his 1819 gothic horror story The Vampyre, which featured an English nobleman, a Lord Ruthven, as the vampire. Polidori’s novel is also of note because the germ of the story was planted during an 1816 story-telling contest with Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and Mary Shelley. And Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was also famously the result of this contest.
Of course, the most famous vampire is Count Dracula, created by Bram Stoker in his 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula. Stoker’s character is named after Vlad III of Wallachia (c.1430–1476/77), a.k.a. Vlad Dracula and Vlad the Impaler. Other than the name, Stoker’s character bears little resemblance to the historical figure. Stoker is likely to have read and been influenced by Polidori’s story.
[29 October edit: added paragraph about and reference to Polidori’s novel]
Sources:
American Heritage Dictionary, fifth edition, 2020, s.v., vampire, n.
The Craftsman, 9.307, 20 May 1732. London: R. Francklin, 1737, 120–22, 127. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“Foreign News.” (10 March 1731/32). The Grub-Street Journal (London), no. 115, 16 March 1731/32. Gale News Vault.
Forman, Charles. A Second Letter to the Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole. London: J. Wilford, 28 February 1733/34, 38. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Hornby, Charles. A Third Letter Containing Some Further Remarks on a Few More of the Numberless Errors and Defects in Dugdale’s Baronage. London: 1738, 204–05. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Merriam-Webster.com, 2020, s.v. vampire, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. vampire, n.
Shapiro, Fred. “Antedating of Vampire.” ADS-L, 22 April 2013.
Photo credit: Dracula, Tod Browning and Karl Freund, dir., Universal Pictures, 1931. Public domain image in the United States.